Tali'Thread vas Clan Zorah nar BSN 6.0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0BuIZYUgLg

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRMWNlWJTq4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usIROlepp5M

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNQ1pETlSXI

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AlvXiPLVfw

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1J3iK9sMsU

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I6_W-dlZwE

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDclD1QMmYM

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdEISFAtHVg

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn7S4ezETpU

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzwvVC8kdS8

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB6gTIu_xhU

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGKjCMA8vgc

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHPy0pGj1as

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfEH--TJ_fY

[Vol]

You know, you'd really expect a Hilton room that costs $250 a night to not have ants in it.

And to be fair, _an_ ant would be alright. An amusing anecdote. Plural, and live, however, is unacceptable. More so that they got into the cheese danish. Plus I forgot the leftover salmon and rice, beer, and water, in the mini-fridge.

That said, Longhorn's is a far better chain restaurant than I remember it being. Granted, $22 for a thin ribeye isn't great, but it was cooked correctly, tasted great, and the mac n' cheese had _flavor_. Which is rare for the side. Also got a skewer of shrimp, which had some sort of zesty sauce on it that was damn fine. Of course I also dunked them in the melted butter.

Let me tell you lads, if you ever grow a mustache, butter is the worst possible thing to get in it, because holy crap does it reek and not come out short a full shower.

To relate this to diet-talk, last night I had most of the loaf of complimentary bread, a bowl of soup, a ribeye, mac n' cheese, shrimp, rice pilaf, and 4 beers. I needed every damn one of those calories, because between yesterday and today, barely finishing the job in time, I burnt every one of them off and then some. So if you want to slim down, eating less and working out is one way. Another is to eat a ton, then spend 2 days running up and down endless stairs at a beachside mansion.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SXRdaLr5RI

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE5hD3eDs1Y

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d55Yq9a9cm8

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8qPFEX2Cgs

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbwI0-GjVD4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBAsvDKe0c

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eyKnPdSdbY

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMVk0h_hBlA

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI9tb57CgtI

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PpxtDtWViM

[Vol]

https://limitedrungames.com/collections ... rs-edition

For a series with only 5 games, of which they're all pretty darn similar, the amount of merchandise they've put out is pretty darn impressive. The amount I've bought, however, will remain a shameful mystery.

Hope whatever revenue they're getting from all this means more actual games/content sooner rather than later, as Wayforward normally has to do a few years of outsourced work before they can afford a new Shantae. The creator has mentioned he wants to branch out to comics/multimedia too, which would be great. Light-hearted, cheesecake fun is sorely lacking right now.

[Alienmorph]

Turns out that one of the artist that worked on Subnauta made his own speculative zoology project and made up a whole planet, its history and the history of its sentient species, and it looks so damn cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRgw1fY7s5U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfZ6RvgmS6s

[Deano]

https://limitedrungames.com/collections/neo-frontpage/products/ps5-limited-run-5-shantae-and-the-pirates-curse-collectors-edition

For a series with only 5 games, of which they're all pretty darn similar, the amount of merchandise they've put out is pretty darn impressive. The amount I've bought, however, will remain a shameful mystery.

Hope whatever revenue they're getting from all this means more actual games/content sooner rather than later, as Wayforward normally has to do a few years of outsourced work before they can afford a new Shantae. The creator has mentioned he wants to branch out to comics/multimedia too, which would be great. Light-hearted, cheesecake fun is sorely lacking right now.

I really like the recent trend with indie games getting physical collectors editions. Like you mentioned it gives the fans an extra way to support the devs which in turn gives them more freedom. I bought the one's for Crosscode and Coffee Talk recently.

[Vol]

For you artist lads, how long did you spend on purely life drawing and anatomy before you started doing creative work? Or was it parallel?

I really like the recent trend with indie games getting physical collectors editions. Like you mentioned it gives the fans an extra way to support the devs which in turn gives them more freedom. I bought the one's for Crosscode and Coffee Talk recently.

There's some heartening signs the middle budget games/studios are finding a place again. That's where the best stuff came, at least relative to what AAA is now. Getting a pipeline for physical swag to help back up the budget is great. Most of the Shantae stuff I have bought was to support the studio as much as to have something to collect dust.

[Ragabul]

I think games have actually finally reached "mature" art form status at this point and you are starting to see a splintering into various niches and genres and budgets in a way that mostly didn't exist in the past. There are now the game equivalents of trendy art house films and B movie straight to video releases and mid budget foreign films and massive action blockbusters and long convoluted TV series that last for 15 seasons.

You also see this with the divergence of styles in art and graphics. I remember as a kid being turned off by games that look "old" after a certain point. My nephews and niece are oblivious to this. They will pivot from Minecraft to Castle Crashers to some latest greatest triple AAA eye candy game with 0 focus on the radical differences in style and format. They just don't care. They just grew up in a world where "games" included all these things and the difference is basically no different than them pivoting between a cartoon TV show with atrocious animation to watching a Marvel movie to watching the Goonies.

I think Steam and GOG and such has also freed people from new release schedules in much the same way something like HBO did. I don't need to care exactly when the new thing is coming out because I have a giant library of content both new and old at my fingertips all the time. I have a constant backlog of games and many of them use art styles that basically never get old or dated. (Something like Hades say. That game will still look and play fine in 20 years in the same way that Looney Tunes still looks fine). I can be playing things that are "new" to me while being completely disconnected from the actual latest, greatest releases just as you could sit around watching "new" movies on HBO and never go to the movies.

So to go back to all those annoying mostly stupid "death of the gamer" articles from 10ish years ago, there is now some kernel of truth to them. You now have to specify what kind of gamer in a way you mostly didn't have to before. I experience this all the time where I meet some person who plays games and they get excited and ask me what kind and my answers is like "mostly isometric RPGs and weird mid tier Japanese games anymore" and they visibly deflate because the games they play are all flight simulators and space colony building sims. There is a dude I work with that spends hours and hours playing some game that sounds like space Fed-Ex simulator the way he describes it. I forget what it's called. I would lose my mind but he will play the way people used to play WOW back in the day (and still are playing WOW ironically).

[Vol]

Oh, Raga, if you only knew.

https://fsl.giants-software.com/

I wouldn't say vidya has quite matured that much, barring a few specific outliers, so much as reached a critical saturation. Same principles tho. The actual artistic value of multimedia products is necessarily lesser than any of its components, unless you have a particularly brilliant mind binding it together. I mean, can you name more than a handful of games, ever, that've had "matured" art, sound, story, and mechanics that back all of them up?

Not to give Ebert too much credit, it's simply a matter of spinning more plates and a general unfamiliarity with shit we don't learn in school or see on TV (to date myself).

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUmQokMZRRI

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmJhGIyxF0c

[Dragaros]

"Discover a world of raw action, primordial horror, and mystic awe in Planegea. New 5E campaign coming to Kickstarter on September 7th!"

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/at ... s/planegea

[Dragaros]

https://twitter.com/planegea

https://atlas-games.com/planegea

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Ragabul]

Oh, Raga, if you only knew.

https://fsl.giants-software.com/

I wouldn't say vidya has quite matured that much, barring a few specific outliers, so much as reached a critical saturation. Same principles tho. The actual artistic value of multimedia products is necessarily lesser than any of its components, unless you have a particularly brilliant mind binding it together. I mean, can you name more than a handful of games, ever, that've had "matured" art, sound, story, and mechanics that back all of them up?

Not to give Ebert too much credit, it's simply a matter of spinning more plates and a general unfamiliarity with shit we don't learn in school or see on TV (to date myself).

I say this also because I don't think there's such a thing as haute art anymore. There are some things that pretend to be haute art but haute art as it existed in like 1800s or something is gone.

[Mazder]

So I twisted my knee at work.
Ow.

[TTTX]

So I twisted my knee at work.
Ow.

that sucks, hope you get better soon.

[Vol]

@Drag: Those 2 "REDACTED" covers threw me for a loop at first. Couldn't see them clearly beyond that, for a hot second, thought it might've been the lost legions getting some lore. Then I leaned in. Heh.

The D&D thing looks neat. Until you look a little closer. It's a strong premise, but the wrong hands to design it.

@Maz: Ooph. Twisted my knees the day I moved back to NJ, from carrying an overheavy suitcase. They've been off and on bad ever since. Hope yours heals up quickly then. Compression sleeves are a lifesaver otherwise.

@Raga: Looking at the lineup for Broadway's return, you're not wrong. 3 good ones tho.

https://www.broadway.com/

But in the context of vidya games, the writing is the big handicap. Because not only do you have to possess all the incredibly rare qualities of a great writer, but it has to be integrated into the chaotic variability of player input. I might write the finest character arc ever about a dark elf assassin thot having an existential breakdown and rebirth, but the design lead mandates all NPCs of her kind are optional, so they only get an exposition moment every X plot beats, and they have to be relevant to the plot beat, so toss it, make her tsundere, and most of her characterization comes from combat quips. But vidya writing in general is clichés piled to infinity. Hence why Shantae is refreshing, in the same way Jimmy Buffet music can be while sipping on a $20 drink in a plastic coconut you suspect has no liquor.

The opposite end is Avellone and the Grieving Mother. Kojima hit a sweet spot with MGS, where it was all absolute silly nonsense, but it _felt_ meaningful and deep in the moment.

[Vol]

~*Vol's NIpponhongonese lesson for the week*~
明後日 - あさって - asatte - the day after tomorrow

The first kanji, "bright, clear, known" is composed of the primitives for sun and moon. Obviously, ancient light sources, nothing could be more bright or clear than them, and symbolically extended to abstract concepts.

The second is a temporal indicator, if I recall from college, that in this context means "after/tomorrow."

The third is the sun, used as "day."

So, we can read this as, "The sun and moon after sun." Remarkably literal, sometimes.

[magnuskn]

So I twisted my knee at work.
Ow.

Get better soon. Damage to the knees sucks, as I discovered a few months ago when I managed to slip and fall in the winter.

[Mazder]

@Maz: Ooph. Twisted my knees the day I moved back to NJ, from carrying an overheavy suitcase. They've been off and on bad ever since. Hope yours heals up quickly then. Compression sleeves are a lifesaver otherwise.

Yeah I got one on. Iced it yesterday and kept it elevated.
Now it only hurts when extended/locked, fully bent and usual walking.

Otherwise it's a dull throb, bruise and a limp.

If I got a cane and a passable american accent I can cosplay fat House.

Get better soon. Damage to the knees sucks, as I discovered a few months ago when I managed to slip and fall in the winter.

Yeah, more annoying that anything.
Because you're just not comfy no matter what you do.

I'm still relatively young so I think I'll be mostly healed in a week.

Honestly the best thing about the whole thing is the off duty A&E (ER) nurse that came to my aid as she was right nearby. She was very helpful. I only wish I got her name so I could thank her.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdVI-_VrKHw

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmfp3FxkLig

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHEu4ZwAB_g